


keeping count (losing count)

by oliverwvvd



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Flintwood, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 17:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11064090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliverwvvd/pseuds/oliverwvvd
Summary: Marcus uses numbers to manage anxiety. He keeps count of their kisses. One day, he slips, and he says the number out loud.





	keeping count (losing count)

Kissing Oliver is always different each time for Marcus. He keeps count, and he isn’t sure if it’s because he doesn’t know how else to cope, or if it’s because each one bears remembering. It might well be both. Numbers help him to keep the chaos in his head ordered in the same way that Quidditch strategy does. He’s never told anyone. He never plans to.

There’s the first time, when their blood is boiling mid-argument; there’s a cut on Oliver’s lip and Marcus’ eye is swollen from where the other punched him. Oliver’s mouth tastes like copper when he closes in, firstly just wanting him to _shut up_ , to stop talking, to stop being so tempting and beyond reach, to just _stop_ , but then Oliver yanks his head back and bites his lower lip, turns what should have conquered him into silence into yet another challenge. Marcus is really, really bad at resisting challenges. As it turns out, he’s even worse at resisting them when they come in the form of a Gryffindor Quidditch captain, whose hair is always a mess and who, as it turns out, makes _not_ kissing him seem like a sin.

There’s the fifth time, when it’s suddenly not angry at all. When Marcus lifts a hand and strokes the nape of Oliver’s neck, sneaks fingers just beneath the edge of shirt collar for more contact with warm skin. When Oliver parts lips to his and shivers like he means it.

There’s the thirty-second time, when Marcus still can’t stop counting because he doesn’t know how many kisses he’s going to get, doesn’t know if there’s going to be a price for these stolen hours and minutes. It’s the one that Oliver presses against his jawline when he leaves the Quidditch pitch, dark in the night hours that they spend out there. It’s feather-light and fleeting and it makes Marcus’ pulse speed with something that feels like fear, but it isn’t.

It takes until approximately kiss number sixty-seven for Marcus to figure out that it isn’t about sex, even if the way that they can take each other apart and yet still leave hungry (wanting, needing more) hasn’t lost any of its impact over time. If it had been, they wouldn’t have kept each other’s interest for all that long. Neither of them says it out loud, but they both know it, and it changes everything.

Marcus is scared that it’s the ninety-third kiss that will end them, can feel his hands, his entire body shaking like it’s going to come apart when Oliver crowds him against a wall and whispers _please_ , _please Marcus_ like nothing else will ever be enough for him, and he realises that he could give him everything. He’s scared that he will run; that he isn’t as brave as the boy whose body and stubborn fucking heart have become his silent place of worship. He’s terrified that he will break everything that they’ve become with a few casual sentences because he can’t handle the weight of what this has to come to mean to him. Better to cut Oliver off before the other can smash _his_ heart into fragments, but it’s far too many kisses too late to protect himself.

Somewhere between the ninety-fourth kiss and the one-hundredth, he accidentally murmurs the words _I missed you_ because it’s been a few weeks. Everything goes to hell in the span of a moment, because Oliver was _never supposed to know_ and now it’s too late to continue pretending he’s not attached.

Seconds after he says it, tries to bury the words in another kiss, Oliver says it back and the anxiety only gets worse, because now he has something to lose. Someday, the other will wake and decide to go on living on his own and leave him behind, a secret never to be told. It’s inevitable. The sons of Death Eaters don’t get to keep boys who make them feel like Icarus, burning and falling too far to slow the descent.

One day, he slips, and he says the number out loud. “Four hundred and twenty one.” When Oliver pulls back and looks at him, perplexed, he drops his eyes, _scared_ all over again, like he never stopped. Maybe he never did.

It doesn’t take Oliver long to figure it out. That Marcus keeps count, and why.

_Because each one could be the last, and if it is, I want to remember you._

Marcus has never seen him cry before that moment, jaw tight, face turned aside; they’re too proud, both of them, except when it comes to each other, as it turns out. It knocks the wind out him, stuns the breath from his chest until he reaches out and gathers Oliver back to him. “How can you not know?” That’s the choked whisper on Oliver’s lips. “How can you not know, after all this time? I didn’t say it because I thought you just…”

 _It._ The thing that’s remained unsaid, and Marcus wants to say _don’t_ , wants to beg Oliver not to cross that line because he’ll destroy him, because Oliver is magic and everything in this forsaken mess of a world that’s good. He’s only ever going to tarnish that.

He breaks when Oliver curves himself around him like he wants nothing more in the world than to keep him safe, and says _I love you_ into his ear. His hands, made for things so much more brutal, learn how to be gentle when they’re tracing the length of Oliver’s spine, when they’re stroking wild, windblown brown hair. He learns that there’s part of him that’s brave enough for this, brave enough for Oliver, if not the rest of the world. “I love you too.”

They’re seventeen and eighteen respectively, and Marcus already knows that love is rarely allowed to last forever, and he starts counting that too, because he can’t help it, because there’s _war_ and for a while, everything feels like loss when he isn’t with Oliver. They’re both trying to stay alive, but in Marcus’ head, there’s only one number that matters when he evades capture by the corrupted Ministry, when he refuses to follow his father’s lead. _Two months since I last kissed you._

Marcus isn’t sure when he loses the total count of their kisses. Somewhere after both of them survive the Battle of Hogwarts and the years that follow, perhaps. Somewhere between realising that Oliver chooses to stay, every single day, and that he isn’t going to leave. He still has spells of anxiety where he needs the definition of numbers, of other means of counting. Three days until the next Quidditch match. Four hours until Oliver is released from the hospital after an injury. One night until they get a whole weekend together to laze in bed, ghosting between bouts of sex where neither of them attempts to be quiet and half-burnt bacon sandwiches because they got distracted in the kitchen.

Every kiss is different, because each one holds a different measure of what Oliver means to him, a different set of numbers that balance him out. When he loses the total count, finally, and he panics upon realising it days later, Oliver tells him that it’s okay.

Marcus believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a headcanon intended for Tumblr, but got a little long for bullet-points, so it got posted as a fic. A little meandering from my tired brain on Flintwood. I don’t do Valentine’s Day, so this was belatedly in lieu. Dedicated to the lovely Flintwood squad at large.


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